Replacement of fish meal in diets for Australian silver perch, Bidyanus bidyanus III. Digestibility and growth using meat meal products

Apparent digestibility and availability coefficients for beef and bone meal , lamb and bone meal, a high protein meal from mixed species (mixed meat me al, reduced ash, no bones) and from Provine(R), a high protein meal based o n selected ingredients, were determined for juvenile silver perch. Experime ntal diets comprised a reference diet plus meat meal products at either 15% or 30% inclusion. Silver perch readily accepted diets with up to 30% meat meal. Digestibility coefficients for dry matter, energy, protein, and avail ability coefficients for amino acids were determined to assist with the for mulation of diets to assess growth of silver perch. Digestibility coefficie nts for dry matter, energy, and protein all increased with increasing prote in content in the meat products. Average amino acid availability coefficien ts were highest for the mixed meat meal and Provine(R). Availability coeffi cients for alanine, arginine, glycine, methionine, proline and serine were all significantly higher for these products than for either beef or lamb me al. Availability of sulphur amino acids was significantly lower in Provine( R) than in other products. Compared with fish meal, all meat products conta ined less lysine and some meat products were also low in phenylalanine, iso leucine, and histidine. An increase in total protein content, through remov al of bone, improved the nutritional value of meat meal in silver perch die ts. Juvenile silver perch were grown for 65 days in 10000-1 tanks, using one of five diets with similar digestible nitrogen, energy, and dry matter but di fferent contents of fish meal, lamb meal, and Provine(R). Fish growth was r educed when diets contained less than 13% fish meal and more than 9% Provin e(R). However, feed conversion efficiency and protein retention efficiency (PRE) were unaffected by diet formulation. These results indicate that meat meal can replace most of the fish meal in silver perch diets without reduc ing fish performance. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.